Saturday, April 12, 2014

Alternative Infrared Subjects - Calculator Circuit Board

This is another post in my continuing series about things you can do with your infrared camera during the winter. If you click on the image, you can see a larger view.

Calculator Circuit Board - f/22 - Infrared

Today I would like to talk about taking infrared photographs of electronic circuit boards. Circuit boards often have an abstract beauty of their own and your infrared camera can showcase this beauty in ways that a normal camera cannot. The removal of the anti-alias filter during the camera conversion can allow an older camera to produce extremely sharp images that work well with chip photography.This particular chip is from an inexpensive "give away" calculator that died. I took apart the case and found this chip with its interesting pattern of circuit lines. The finger connectors at the top were connected to an LCD display which I removed.The photograph was taken with a Nikon D90 that was converted to a standard infrared camera (720nm) by LifePixel. I used a Nikkor 105mm VR f/2.8 macro lens. The chip is tilted away from the camera so I had to use a very small aperture (f/22) to get everything in focus. Lighting was from an overhead halogen light.You don't have to leave your IR camera in the closet during the winter or use it for a paperweight. IR photography can happen all year long.